Miller: Camacho too loco to ever forget

Nov. 25, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Former boxing champion Hector "Macho" Camacho, front center, poses for photographers at his arrival to the Premio Lo Nuestro Music Awards in Miami. Camacho was shot in the face, and died on Saturday after his mother took him off life supprt. ALAN DIAZ, AP

Former boxing champion Hector "Macho" Camacho, front center, poses for photographers at his arrival to the Premio Lo Nuestro Music Awards in Miami. Camacho was shot in the face, and died on Saturday after his mother took him off life supprt. ALAN DIAZ, AP

Hector Camacho died Saturday, taken off life support by his mother, and just try to think of a worse moment for a mom?

He is being remembered as a multiple world champion, an outrageous personality and a disturbed soul who was in and out of trouble, jail and headlines.

Me, I'll remember him for the day we spent together several years ago in Florida, in advance of one of his comeback fights, the day he made an illegal left turn, against a red light, causing traffic in every direction to jerk to a halt and then, a moment later, ignoring the car horns and middle fingers directed at him, turned to me and, without the hint of a grin, said: "I've done away with the old Camacho. He was too hyper and did things without thinking. The new Camacho thinks before he acts."

Hector Camacho, may a crazy man now rest in peace.

The interview was one of the most entertaining of my career, just me and "Macho" and a couple members of his crew, which, at that point, was more of a thinned herd than a legit entourage.

Camacho was readying to fight a nobody in the middle of nowhere for a paycheck and little else. His greatness had waned and his celebrity faded, but his personality remained in full bloom.

This was a man who once had 15 cars but no driver's license. He was a singer and a dancer, a regular on Puerto Rican television, where he would lean into the camera and proclaim, "I'm to boxing what Michael Jackson is to music."

He entered the ring in sequins and feathers, dressed at various times as a fireman, a Trojan or a gladiator. Once, he entered wearing a diaper. He dressed in capes and fur-trimmed hats. He liked to have a single curl of hair decorating his forehead.

I asked him about the fight-night costumes and he explained that he'd lie in bed at night, dreaming with his eyes open, concocting his next outfit.

I also asked him about the 15 cars.

"You know how it is when you're young," Camacho said. "You want this car and that car. Pretty soon, you find yourself with a bunch of leftovers."

He was once charged with marijuana possession, disorderly intoxication and three counts of battery on a police officer during a late-night confrontation in a Miami hotel. The episode began with Camacho standing in the lobby and repeatedly shouting, "I'm the Macho Man!"

My favorite Camacho police-blotter entry: While in a Ferrari driving along a Florida freeway, he was pulled over – for going too slow. The officer became suspicious when he noticed the passenger in the car was sitting on Camacho's lap.

"He was trying to do the wild thing," the cop noted. "You're on a date doing 35 mph. I mean, anybody could see that he was trying to get his thrills."

Camacho had issues, alarming and dangerous issues. There was cocaine abuse and domestic violence. He stole cars and shoplifted as a hobby. One time, he was arrested for attempting to take an M-16 rifle through customs.

During our day together, he told me he had matured, that he had grown up, that he was more of a family man. Then, maybe 10 minutes later, he said: "I still have to be my Macho Man. I flirt, dance, sing. I tell my wife I'm going out and will be right back...then I show up four days later. Flirting is healthy. It's good for my ego."

Camacho eventually divorced.

"I had the bachelor life with five or six hundred women and the money and the fame," he said that day. "But part of that was trouble. I tried to be a fighter, a lover and a fly guy. I'm lucky, really, to be alive the way I've lived. Most people probably would have been shot up in the street or be in jail. Or both."

Camacho died after being shot in the face while sitting in a parked car with a buddy and bag of coke. The fighter who was so hard to knock down, who absorbed so many punches to the chin, was ultimately felled by a bullet to the jaw.

He was 50.

Asked Saturday how he wished for his son to be remembered, Camacho's father, also named Hector, said, "As he always was, loco."

How else could we remember Hector Camacho than loco? Much too loco to ever forget.

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